Writing of individual artists and their need to resist the horrifying
circumstances of modernism; of the fear of going over to the other side
(becoming ‘decorative’); of passion to abandon the lyric, finding it
vulgar, preferring nihilism, T.J. Clark concludes Farewll to an Idea
with a diptych of Pound and Pasolini, en face. Where Pound wrote, “Here
error is all in the not done, / all in the diffidence that faltered,
Pasolini: “Shall I ever again be able to act from pure passion, / when I
know that our history is finished?” (Pasolini, Selected Poems, 22).
 
Clark’s footnote to this gesture reads: “My final paring is made all the
more unbearable …. By Pasolini’s having chosen some phrases from Pound’s
Canto XCIX as a voice over in his film Salò to the vilest images of
agony and rape. “Poetry Corner,” Pasolini calls the moment. But of
course he selects Pound’s phrases as his image of Fascism’s dream of
rectitudejust because he too felt their power.”
 
Make of this what you will as a contribution to the thread; for me it is
an illuminating bit of serendipity in my reading.
 
 
--
Don Wellman